


Retrouvailles

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Series: Walls and Windmills [4]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, First Time, Love Letters, Mystery, Reunions, Robbery, Undercover Missions, Undercover as Married
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-19 17:00:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12414264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: Each en route to the other, Miss Fisher and Detective-Inspector Robinson find themselves onboard an ocean liner and on the trail of a ring of jewel thieves, who will stop at nothing to keep Phryne and Jack from ever reaching home.





	1. A Lying Sort of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> As there’s likely to be a movie soon, I thought I should squeeze in one more reunion fic. ;) Some of my betas have seen this story before, in various forms, and a few bits and pieces made their way into [You Asked For It](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4799084/chapters/10983662), but the bulk of the fic is entirely new.

_Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore_  
_My love was infinite, if spring make it more._  
_~ John Donne, “Love’s Growth”_

_January 1930_

Phryne stormed into her bedroom in her parents’ newly-purchased London townhouse (purchased by Phryne herself and deeded in her mother’s name, so that her wastrel father couldn’t lose it in a card game) and slammed the door. It made a loud and very satisfying _bang!_ and absorbed a little of her frustration. Kicking off her torturous shoes, she flopped back on her bed and groaned. 

She had only been in London for two scant months, the first of which she had needed to spend recovering from the month-long aeroplane ride she had shanghaied her father into in order to save his marriage, and the second of which had been spent tripping the light fantastic, as it were, and gathering up the heart of every man in the city. It wasn’t as diverting a hobby as it had once been. Her thoughts, and her heart, were still in Melbourne.

Sitting up, Phryne flipped through the stack of half-opened mail on her nightstand. She had barely glanced at it that morning, except to see if there was a letter from Jack. She’d had postcards from Hugh and Dot and updates from Mr. Butler and long letters from Jane and Aunt Prudence, but the short, intense notes from Jack were the one she treasured most. He could let himself be so much more forthcoming on paper than in speech... 

She opened the drawer of her nightstand and removed a small book, bound in gorgeous red leather. From between its pages, she drew out a letter. She knew the page’s contents by heart, but she curled up on her bed and read it again, so that she could hear the writer’s voice.

_Dear Phryne,_

_I hope this reaches you before the day in question, but in case it doesn’t, happy belated birthday. I’d planned to be in England long before now, in answer to your imperious summons that day at the airfield, but we’re short-handed since the Crash and up to our ears in labor disputes. No doubt you have plenty to amuse yourself with in London – the newspaper clippings you sent in your last were very… entertaining. Solving murders with a peer’s son, and one with an inside line to Scotland Yard, no less, must certainly be more invigorating than butting heads with a poor dull DI. Thank you for telling me he’s a complete ass and not worth your time. I almost believe you._

_I’ve enclosed a small gift in honor of your birthday, the most luxurious little copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets I’ve ever seen. Cliché, I know. But well intentioned. God how I miss you. A man can only live so long on one kiss, and all the poetry’s gone out of murder since you left. Forgive the melodrama, and come home soon._

_All my love, Jack._

"Phryne? May I come in?"

She laid the book on the nightstand and slipped the letter into her bodice quickly. "Yes, Mother!"

Lady Margaret Fisher rustled into her daughter's room. "Are you all right, child?"

"Oh... yes, yes, of course. I just got tired of the party."

"You. Getting tired of a party. That was thrown expressly for your birthday."

"Yes, by Father, probably with my money. Which I can of course _absolutely_ afford, after the financial crash in the States in October..." Phryne pulled the sequined band from her head and gave her hair an invigorating ruffle. "I'm fine, Mother. Truly."

Margaret speared her daughter with a knowing look. “Phryne, there are some things a mother doesn’t have to be told.” She peered at the inscription in the little book lying open on Phryne’s nightstand. “‘Jack’… Is this the Detective Inspector your father likes to tease you about?” Phryne didn’t answer. “I had been wondering. You’ve seemed far less interested in the… intimate company of gentleman, since your return to England.”

Phryne’s lips turned up at their corners. “There’s no putting anything past you, is there? You almost sound disappointed. Does this mean you’ve been tacitly approving of my scandalous behavior, all these years?”

“ _No_ , I do _not_ approve. But that is who you are, my dear, and if something has happened to change your behavior, I should like to know why.” Again, she waited for Phryne to volunteer anything. “Have you and he…?” 

Phryne looked at her mother in surprise, and then let out a humorless little huff. “No. And not for lack of trying, on my part.” 

“You mean he’s making you _work_ for something you want?” Margaret grinned. “That must be a novelty for you.”

“A very irritating novelty. Since leaving Jack, I can’t seem to work up an interest beyond casual flirting in anyone else. Fenn-Cooper kissed me tonight, and all I could think of was Jack.” She sighed in frustration. “Was it just inevitable that I should get tired of the chase and want to settle down?” 

Margaret snorted. “Darling, I think there is little danger of that. But I’m glad to know there’s a man who’s making you at least consider it.” She cupped Phryne’s face in her hands. “You know my feelings, Phryne. You know I would dearly love to see you with a permanent partner of _some_ sort, and you could make a hell of a titled conquest out of any of the bachelors downstairs right now, just by saying the word. But my marriage to your father… well.” She trailed off, clearly unwilling to discuss such a subject with her daughter, despite the fact that Phryne knew all and Margaret _knew_ that she knew all. “Your Aunt Prudence writes me long, outraged letters about your ‘debauched, hedonistic’ lifestyle and expects me to share in her censure. But I can’t, darling. I want you to be happy.”

“Even if it means giving up on the idea of grandchildren?”

“Oh, if I _must_.” Lady Margaret let out a protracted sigh, gave her daughter a knowing look, and then produced a telegram from somewhere about her richly-decorated person. “This came for you, while you were up here sulking.”

Phryne rolled her eyes at her mother, precisely as she had as a girl, and opened the telegram. She read the lines once, then again, and then shot to her feet. “I think it’s time for me to go home,” she said, with decided firmness.


	2. Old Business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: I used to have copious notes about just how Phryne made it to Cairo, but that notebook has since been packed in preparation for a move, and damned if I know what box it’s in. This is at least hopefully somewhat plausible. But let's be real, 1920s/1930s timetables aren't what we're here for. ;)

There was no possibility of getting a ship to Melbourne, not in London in January. The best itinerary she had been able to throw together on such short notice was ten days in series of trains across the continent to Athens, and then across the Mediterranean to Cairo, where she had managed to just barely meet the _S.S. Mantua_ before it sailed through the Suez Canal, bound for Melbourne. But even that mad dash would have been enjoyably exhilarating... except for one thing: young Lord Jamieson Fenn-Cooper, her erstwhile suitor of the ball, who had doggedly followed her with a stubborn offer of marriage of on his lips.

Consequently, she had spent the first few days of the journey sequestered in her cabin. But she could not shut the world out forever, more’s the pity.

Much against her better judgment, Phryne dressed for the dance being held in the first-class lounge. She had a strange feeling about the passengers on this ship... or perhaps that was merely the suffocating presence of Lord Jamieson Fenn-Cooper. "I do hate a man who won't take 'no' for an answer," she groused to her mirror, as she fixed her makeup and smoothed a headband of beaten silver leaves over her lustrous dark hair. 

It had taken a good hour of studying to determine just which gown she wanted to wear to this dance. She wanted to attract attention (naturally) but if that meant also attracting further attention from Jamie, she might have been better off wearing sackcloth and ashes. In the end, she settled on something simple, a bit less flashy than she normally preferred, but still elegant, sapphire silk velvet with a flared skirt and a sleeveless bodice embroidered with silver threads. Silver shoes, a necklace to match the velvet, and a stole of her favorite white fox to complete the effect of an aloof beauty.

She rather hoped the cool colors would fight off any further inkling towards passion that Jamie might be harboring. 

Just before she headed out, she snatched up a bit of folded paper from her dressing table and tucked it into her bodice. Jack's birthday letter to her had become a bit of a good luck charm, and she felt very much in need of his dry good sense and steady presence tonight, even if it was only in spirit.

Much to her satisfaction, she was able to slip out of her cabin and into the company of a passing party of ladies and gentlemen who were also on their way to the party, and just in the nick of time, as it turned out. When she glanced back, she saw Jamie knocking on her door in vain. 

"Do the spoiled boy right to be stood up," Phryne muttered, settling her stole as they entered the large lounge that was given over to the dance that night. 

"I beg your pardon," said a voice from out of the distant past, "but I do believe... why, yes, it is, it's little Phryne Fisher!"

Phryne grimaced, then turned round with her brightest society smile plastered across her face. "Lady Fallweather, isn't it?"

"That's right," said the bird-like elderly woman, clasping Phryne's hand as though she was a long-lost relation, "we met at a garden party at your dear Aunt Prudence's house, oh, it was simply ages ago! What a fortunate coincidence that we should be on the same voyage. You must tell me how your aunt has been getting on."

Phryne was spared squirming her way out of that by the breathless appearance of her erstwhile suitor, a tall fresh-faced lad with brown hair and wide blue eyes. "Ah, Miss Fisher! There you are!" Jamie smiled, his broad chest heaving theatrically. "I thought I'd missed you."

"No such luck," she replied, almost managing to turn the words into a joke. "Lady Fallweather, may I present Lord Jamieson Fenn-Cooper, the younger son of the Duke of Mordake. Jamie, this is Lady Amelia Fallweather. Of the Bedford Fallweathers," she added pointedly.

Jamie straightened up courteously and murmured appropriate pleasantries over the old woman's hand. Even he knew not to offend one of the Bedford Fallweathers. 

While he was being polite for a change, Phryne took the opportunity to scan the room. There was a peculiar aura of danger lurking underneath the general good breeding that abounded in the lounge, one that she was having trouble putting her finger on. She noted several society beauties of London and Paris, an equal number of society rakes, an American actor of middling quality, three German financiers doing business out of Cairo, along with their spouses... and one oddly familiar pomaded head above a broad set of shoulders.

Her eyes widened in astonishment. She could only see him from the back, but she _knew_ that back. And she knew those hands, one gesturing with a half-full tumbler of whiskey. She even swore she knew the posture of legs, hips, and back all moving together with an unconscious dancing grace. Like a waltz... 

"Lady Fallweather," she said, studiously casual, "who is that man?"

"Hmm? Oh, that's Mr. Robards. He's some sort of trader. _Australian._ " 

"Indeed? How very appealing..."

"Rather fast, I believe; all the young ladies on board have their eyes on him."

The man seemed to feel the eyes on the back of his head, and he broke off his conversation and looked round with a guarded expression. 

Phryne's heart leaped in her chest and nearly bounded straight out of her ribs, and in the same moment the urgent telegram that had prompted her departure from England flashed into her mind. _"I'm being sent undercover,"_ Jack's message had said. 

So although all she wanted to do was call out his name in delight and run into his arms, instead, Phryne put a hand on her hip and met his cautious gaze with a coolly inviting one of her own. 

The familiar blue eyes in their unfamiliar persona skimmed over Phryne's figure, a perfect imitation of every womanizer and a scoundrel that she had ever encountered. _So is that the part you're playing, Jack Robinson..._ Her mouth practically watered at the thought, and she smiled at him with well-bred hunger. _Once a frustrated actor, always a frustrated actor._

He drained the rest of his drink, set the glass down on the bar, and crossed the dance floor to where Phryne and her companions were standing. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure," he said, in the same warm gruff tones that Phryne had been hearing in her sleep for months. "John Robards."

"Phryne Fisher." She offered him her hand, which he kissed, to her delight, with all the elegance of a born dandy. Behind her, she could feel Jamie seething. Well, good. "Mr... Robards, is it?"

"The same. Perhaps you've heard of me." His long fingers indicated the sapphires around her neck. "I trade in gemstones."

"Ahh... yes, Mr. Robards, I believe I do have some acquaintance... with your name."

"Phryne," Jamie broke in, sounding very put out, "no doubt Mr. Robards is here for business, not pleasure. And you promised to dance with me tonight."

"Did I, Lord Fenn-Cooper?" she said, clipping her words tightly, "I think you must be thinking of someone else. I don't believe I've promised dances to anyone this evening."

"Is that so?" Jack's face was completely expressionless, but his eyes flared. "Then perhaps you'd honor me with your company, Miss Fisher."

Phryne let out a breath of relief she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Mr. Robards, the pleasure is all mine."

He clasped her hand in his and led her onto the dance floor, and then took her in his arms with the casual disinterest of a world-weary playboy. But under the cover of the music... "Phryne," he murmured, "thank God."

"Pleased to see me, are you?"

"More than you could possibly imagine. And thank you for not blowing my cover."

"I nearly did. I never expected you to be on this ship. I only remembered your telegram at the last possible second. Before that, I was ready to bound across the room and fling myself at you."

"Miss me too, did you?"

A complicated step made it impossible for Phryne to answer, but the look in her eyes told him everything. 

That one dance led to another, and then to a third, and then Phryne lost count, until at last the band struck up a slow, wailing blues tune that set her bones singing. She and Jack were pressed scandalously close together, and his cheek was against her cheek...

“I suggest we leave the dance floor immediately, Mr. Robards.” 

“Oh? And why is that, Miss Fisher?” 

“Well, unless you want to shock everyone with wild and profligate displays of intimacy, right here on the dance floor…”

"My cabin's on the port side."

"Mine's on the starboard side."

Jack's breath was warm on her ear and neck. "Yours is closer."

Phryne's hand tightened on his shoulder. "Always so practical... Shall we make our getaway? And quickly, before my unwanted admirer realizes I've left him hanging." Jack laughed softly. Phryne almost melted into him. It had been so long for her...

"In that case, let's make ourselves scarce, Miss Fisher," he murmured. She took his hand from her hip and clasped it tightly, and then ducked behind another couple who were taking even more shameless advantage of the slow song and the lowered lights. Jack followed her lead, slipping between the dancers and the guests lingering at the bar and the cocktail tables, until they were back out on deck.


	3. Favour the Bold

The sensual sea air hit greeted them with open arms and discreet darkness, and when Phryne found herself whirled round and pressed up against a cabin's outer wall, she didn't care if it was Jack Robinson or John Robards who was romancing her, so long as nothing else ever came between them. She pulled his head down and found his lips. He tasted like whiskey and tea, smelled like bay rum. His big hands lifted her by the waist; she hitched a knee over his hip and shook with delight when he ran a hand up her thigh to grasp her backside.

"Right here?" she panted, perfectly prepared for him to say yes.

He broke the kiss, gasping softly, pressing his forehead to hers. "No... no, I've waited too long for this."

Only momentarily disappointed, Phryne caught his lips again. "In that case," she said, gently dislodging his hand from her rump, "let's get out of the wind."

By the pale lights illuminating the deck, she found her way to her cabin. "You got an on-deck room?" Jack said.

"It's amazing what a title and a fat checkbook will do for a last-minute booking." Phryne fumbling with her key, wrenched her door open, and hauled the unprotesting Jack inside by the lapel of his coat, slamming and locking the door behind him. "Now then," she purred, pressing the button to turn on the saloon cabin's electric lights, "I believe you were in the middle of something... Inspector."

A look of fond exasperation cut through Jack's desire, and then slowly, he smiled. He grasped Phryne's bare arm and drew her to him, cupping her hair in his hand precisely as he had done all those months ago and pressing his thin, deliciously pliant lips to hers. "That day at the air field was the best kiss of my life," he murmured, when they came up for air. "But it's hard to..."

"To live so long on one kiss?" Phryne gazed up at him, her eyes mischievous and adoring. "So you've mentioned." Without looking away from him (her lipstick was on his mouth and she so desperately wanted to add more of it), she reached into her bodice and pulled the long-traveled piece of paper from her brassiere.

Jack unfolded the letter and stared at it. "Have you kept this in your..." He cleared his throat, unable to refer to a woman's intimate apparel even when he was about three seconds from removing it from her person. _God, it’s still warm from her skin…_ "This whole time?"

"I have." Phryne carefully removed her headband and set it on her dressing table, and kicked off her silver shoes. "Right beside my heart. Cliché, I know," she added, very softly. "But well-intentioned." She took the paper from his fingers and placed it beside the headband. Then she reached up and began to undo Jack's black dress tie with slow, deliberate motions. She could feel his blood pounding beneath his skin.

"It's... been a long time for me, Phryne...” His breath snagged in his chest. “I don't—"

"I won't be disappointed, Jack, if that's what you're worried about." She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and went from there, moving gently, until her lips and tongue were exploring the new expanses of skin revealed by the undone tie and each inch of unbuttoned dress shirt. For such a perpetually correct man, he was inexplicably without an undershirt, for which Phryne was profoundly grateful…

"Yes, you've... already seen everything I have to offer..." His hands on her shoulders stopped her before she could go much further, and gently but firmly forced her upright. Phryne bit back a soft noise of annoyance and prepared to be told to stop... "I, on the other hand," Jack continued, in a warm dark almost-whisper, his eyes wide with barely-restrained desire, "have only seen half. You fan dance very well, Miss Fisher, but I'm afraid you've got the better of me."

A slow smile of her own tugged at Phryne's lips. "How impolite of me." She took Jack's hands and showed him where the embroidered velvet bodice fastened. 

His fingers on the tiny hook-and-eye fasteners mimicked the slow, careful movement of her own on his tie and shirt, and his lips traced much the same pattern hers had followed, from the corner of her mouth, delicately down her throat, to the hollow made by her collarbones, where he lingered, tasting her. Phryne let her head fall back, reveling in the feel of Jack's slow, cautious, curious kisses. It was maddening: she wanted him now. And it was exactly what she needed after months away from him and years of being unable to have him. 

When he reached the bottom of the bodice, Phryne stepped back, just enough to give Jack room to take hold of her skirt and pull the dress up over her head. He dropped the garment blindly across the back of a chair and then paused for breath. "Oh, don't stop now," Phryne purred, with just a hint of desperation. She insinuated herself back into his embrace, pushing the dress coat from his shoulders and pulling his shirttails from his waistband so she could finish the rest of the buttons. 

His hands came to rest on the swells of her hips; without quite meaning to, she ground against him, eager to touch and feel everything he had to offer. He let out a low groan that came up from way down deep in his belly and struck home at the same place in her. For a long moment or two they stayed like that, bare chest to almost-bare chest, suit trousers to silk, lips moving slowly upon lips, not because they wanted to, but because they had to.

Finally Jack slipped his braces off his shoulders. He discarded his shirt and picked Phryne up in one smooth motion. She wrapped her arms round his neck and kissed him soundly. "You have no idea how often I've dreamed of these gorgeous biceps doing just this," she told him, smiling against his lips. "I do so love a man who can sweep me off my feet."

"It was a long five months, without you to keep me in training," said Jack dryly. He carried her easily to the bed. "The station's gym saw a lot of me."

Phryne let him sit down on the edge of the luxurious mattress to kick off his shoes and pull off his socks, and then grabbed him unexpectedly by the shoulders and pinned him to the bed. "Well then," she smiled breathlessly, straddling his hips, "time to see what else you've been up to in my absence." She reached for the waistband of his black trousers.

"Phryne." Jack grabbed her wrists and stilled them. "Phryne, wait, please."

There were few times in Phryne's life that she ever allowed anyone to tell her to wait before going ahead with getting something she wanted. But a lover was absolutely and always one of those times. "What's wrong?"

He swallowed hard. "You've... seen me... already." There were the beginnings of a faint but obvious blush rising to his lean cheeks that she was sure was not the result of overweening modesty, and something inside Phryne broke a little.

"I have, Jack," she said, very gently, "yes." She loosed her hands and then trailed her fingertips lightly up the center of his stomach, and then down the left side of his rib cage, coming to rest just above the hipbone, where a line of raised, discolored skin stood out like shotgun pellets. "Shrapnel wounds leave... very distinctive scars." She bowed her head and leaned forward to kiss his lips, softly and carefully. "And very distinctive internal injuries."

He said nothing, only buried his hands in her short jetty hair and held her against him. The sound of their combined breathing echoed between them. "I've seen them," Phryne repeated, with her cheek pressed to his, "and I still want you. I saw them months ago, and I still came after you. Whatever you can do, Jack Robinson... I want you to do."

His hands slid down the sides of her head, one to cradle her neck, the other to travel down her back and then to press down hard on her silk-covered rump, so that she could feel precisely what he could do. "The only thing I _can't_ do," he said, over Phryne's little mewl of pleasure, "is the one thing you wouldn't _want_ me to do."

"Perfect," Phryne gasped. She straightened up momentarily and liberated herself of her now-unwanted slip and brassiere. "Then let's do the rest."


	4. New Business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll get back to what passes for a plot in this fic soon, I promise... but c'mon, we all know very few of us are here for the _plot_. ;)

In the moments after, everything seemed abnormally quiet, and with her eyes closed and Jack’s forehead on hers, Phryne’s senses felt tuned to an almost painful peak of consciousness. Never in all of her experiences with lovers far and wide had she ever been so very _aware_ of a man’s body. He was still hard and straining inside her, but even more than that simple joining, she could feel him. She could feel, through his chest pressed to her, the sensation of Jack’s heart thudding slowly to rest, in her skull, in her veins, in all her most vulnerable places. All the muscles of his solid frame weighed her down against the soft mattress, and her skin could denote each inch of his, every contour, every hair and scar and birthmark. His very breath in her mouth tasted, namelessly, undeniably, of him.

When he would have moved, Phryne held onto him, digging her nails into his back and clinging to his lips. “No! No… Don’t go, Jack.”

“I’m not too heavy?”

He nearly was; he had all but collapsed on her after his climax, and she could scarcely breathe. But she was far from feeling restrained or trapped by his weight pressing her into the bed. “Never.” She carded her fingers through his hair, smiling at how absurdly boyish he looked when the thick brown curls were set free from their normally restrained side-part. “But… could you shift a little?”

Jack obligingly shifted his weight back onto his knees. “Oh,” Phryne gasped as the air rushed back into her lungs. “Much better!”

“Good.” His smile was the slight, slow one that tugged the most at all of Phryne’s gentler feelings, and the dark need had gone from his eyes, leaving them softly blue and slightly sleepy. Phryne saw in them everything she felt for Jack, reflected back at her in kind. Then, after a few seconds of falling into one another, Jack’s smile began to widen. “You seemed almost as desperate as I was.”

“It was a very dry London season,” said Phryne, in a tone to match.

“Oh? No seductions to relate, Miss Fisher? No conquests?”

“I could’ve had several, but it wouldn’t have been fair to those enamored young men. The flesh was willing – very willing – but the heart was… elsewhere.” She sounded almost shy, making that confession, and Jack’s eyes were suddenly very bright.

“I am… very glad to see you, Phryne,” he said huskily. “For obvious reasons. And because I need your help.”

“That’s my second favorite phrase, coming from you.”

“…And the first?”

She smiled knowingly and placed her lips very close to his ear. “‘Do it again.’” Jack growled low in his chest and licked a stripe from her collarbone to her jaw. Phryne gasped out a laugh. “Tell me about the case.”

“…What, now?”

“No time like the present! Unless you think you’re ready again so soon?”

He froze for a second or two and then raised his head to glare at her with a familiar expression of fond exasperation. “Do you want to know how long it’s been since I had a woman in my bed?”

“Not really.” Phryne made a sympathetic face and groaned theatrically. “I’m not sure I could _cope_ with thinking about going without for… what I assume was a considerable length of time?”

“Considerable.” 

“But I thought you and Concetta—”

“Concetta isn’t _you_ , Phryne. So when you say, ‘If you _think_ you’re ready’…” He did something with his hips that momentarily took away Phryne’s ability to speak.

She scraped her fingernails down the length of his ribs, making Jack shiver and twitch irritably inside her. “Point taken, Inspector,” she purred, quirking her eyebrows in anticipation.

“Now,” she asked sleepily, some time later – much, _much_ later, “what exactly is this case that brought you halfway round the world under an assumed name?”

“In the morning, Phryne,” Jack murmured.

She lifted her head from its comfortable spot on his chest. “Why not now?”

“Because I don’t know what time it is, and because I can’t feel my legs, and because that felt nice.” He twined his fingers into her jetty hair and gently tugged her back down.

Phryne resumed her spot without complaint. “You could still tell me about the case.”

“I could. Or I could go to sleep. I had a long and frustrating day before you turned up, and so far my evening hasn’t been precisely relaxing. Not that I’m complaining, mind you… And,” he continued, correctly reading her scowl, “if you call me a wet blanket I will throw you out into the corridor with nothing _but_ a blanket.”

“You wouldn't dare—” Jack suddenly scooped her up, naked as the day she was born, got out of bed and started to carry her to the door. Phryne let out a little shriek. “All right!” she laughed. “You’re an evil man, Jack Robinson – and I’ve missed you desperately.”

He carried her back to bed, with Phryne’s arms twined round his neck and her pale eyes gazing up at him adoringly. She curled up under his arm and snuggled her head in the crook of his neck and shoulder, and they slept. It was the first time in months, since well before she had left Australia, that she had fallen asleep with someone else in her bed, literally in someone’s arms, and it was the best night’s rest she’d had since… _Since realizing I loved him,_ she admitted, as she woke reluctantly, some hours later, with the sun shining through her cabin window and right into her face.

She stumbled, rather inelegantly, to the porthole to draw the blinds, which had been open all night. Thankfully, they were much too high off the deck for anyone to have gotten an eyeful as they walked by.

Wrapping her body in a silk dressing down, Phryne reclaimed her spot in bed, intending to kiss Jack awake for the pleasure of listening to him grumble at her. But instead, she found herself captivated by his face. She had seen him asleep before, but never quite like this. All the hard, stern lines of his face were relaxed and peaceful. His brow was unfurrowed, his jaw was loose, and his head was tilted to one side on his pillow so that she could see his oddly pale eyelashes fluttering gently as he breathed.

“What is it about you, Jack Robinson?” she whispered, almost inaudibly. “What makes you different from all the other men I’ve known?” His breathing changed tempo; Phryne froze for a second or two, but he did not wake, and she continued her musings in the safety of her thoughts.

Out of all the lovers she had ever had, why should it be this man to surpass them all? She’d had subjectively handsomer men, men more technically adept in the esoteric arts of the bedroom, men arguably more educated, more well-built, more adventurous and daring. But she could look back on them all without regret, without shame, and without missing them all that much. When had that changed?

Her partnership with Jack had always been one of seeming opposites, her pushing and him pulling. She had flirted with him as thoughtlessly as she breathed, hoping to someday find the crack in his dour exterior through which she could pull him into her world, if only for a night… But by the time that happened, he was too intertwined with her daily routines, with her professional life, to simply have him once and then send him on his way. He was too important to her to be one more lover. He cared for her, and she for him. And though there had been other men in the interlude between understanding and succumbing, none of them had ever stood a chance of dislodging the place Jack had taken, quietly and stubbornly, in her heart.

There might yet still be other men. But Phryne couldn’t imagine wanting anyone else the way she wanted Jack. It was a very strange thing for her to feel. She wasn’t at all sure if she liked it.

Jack breathed deeply, and his eyes fluttered open. “Stop staring at me, Phryne,” he smiled.

“I’m not staring, I’m contemplating mysteries.”

“What mysteries?”

“The shadow of your cheekbone. The line of your jaw. The sight of eternity in your lips and eyes. The bliss of your brow.”

“‘A very honest woman, but something given to lie.’” Jack reached up and cupped her cheek in his hand, smiling drowsily. “The mystery to me is that I fell asleep beside you, and now that I’m awake, you’re still here.”


End file.
